I finally have this mummy themed warframe out of the cooker and he’s pretty fun so far. To get more out of him I guess I need to work on getting a one handed dagger so that I can use Covert Lethality. Though that’ll be grand for Ivara too so no sense in NOT having that. Apparently it’s only works in single daggers, of which I currently have none and of course have to build.

As if building things is a problem for a crafting nut like me!

I’ll probably have him done soon and I’ll probably play him here and there as he has some pretty fun skills that I actually like so far. I also need to finish leveling Zephyr Prime and hopefully Titania will be out of the foundry before the weekend.

I may or may not have a small problem collecting Warframes.

Well really the problem is that they’re all so fun to play. It’s hard to choose which one I like the best, though I will openly admit that I enjoy some of them a LOT more than others. I also like that Warframe doesn’t punish me for leveling up new frames and since I gain mastery by leveling up new warframes and weapons, trying out new things is actually a bonus.

That and I really enjoy trying out new weapons since they have some REALLY unique weapons in Warframe. While at first it can be a bit of a draw back that Warframe is just so different from most MMO’s out there that it can really throw you off. If you stick with it though, it really is worth the time it takes to step outside the norm and wade into Warframe.

I’ve enjoyed this play through since I’ve taken my time. Experimented with weapons, and I’ve done a LOT of reading on the wiki. Which can help quite a bit.

Not that I would have imagined myself saying that about a year ago I can tell you that much. When I first tried it I had no idea what was going on, what did what, what I even WAS in the game! But then I learned how to fish, and from there the rest is history.

Hey any game that gives me a good reason to fish as a great game in my book.

Though I’m not all crazy fisher in the game since I still need to farm for some of the awesome mods I want and wait for Baro to actually sell the really awesome mods I want. In the meantime though, it’s back to missions. It can be a bit repetitive, but when you’re using new warframes all the time it doesn’t really get old.

Though what is getting old is that after a patch landed yesterday my Battacor keeps firing on other people’s screen for some weird reason. That’s pretty annoying. I’ll have to figure out jut how I bugged my Battacor later.

I actually still have quite a bit to do in Warframe since I have a few years worth of content to catch up on. I have bits of story to do, a lot of warframes to farm, and a bunch of upgrading to do. While it can be pretty grindy I feel like I’m moving at a pretty solid pace which is odd for an MMO especially a grindy one.

Though these days to me it feels like the quest oriented theme park games are almost more grindy than the just go out and kill stuff games. Possibly because of all the waiting and time spent running around.

Even though I am oddly obsessed with Warframe, as I tend to do when I find a shiny, it is a game that has enough depth to it and enough content variety to keep me busy. Something that it’s taken Warframe a few years to build up and something that a lot of MMO’s never figured out how to master even over time.

I’m also a lot more willing to log in since Warframe doesn’t charge a monthly fee or have any premium subscription packages. I can access all of my stuff whenever I want and honestly I feel more generous to games that let me spend when and how I want as opposed to holding things over my head like inventory space, access to my own characters and level limitations.

I’m glad that GW2 proved that MMO’s could make money using their current free to play model and hopefully they’ll continue on that trend now that they’ve added the Nintendo Switch to the number of ways you can access and play Warframe. The use of a tradeable cash shop currency probably has a lot to do with how they’re able to have an in game credit system used for in game stuff.

I could probably write a series on how virtual currencies actually give people more incentive to play games than less, but that’d be for another day. Until next time, remember your F-budget and don’t forget to have some fun out there.

Last night I actually had a lot of fun with CrankyB. We went for a walk through the Neocron Zoo which is one of my favorite places to visit in Neocron.

After that we went hunting for Warbots and Firemobs. Though I did forget my fire resist belt like a moron and ended up getting offed once.

On the bonus side, being a PPU I was able to buff against the fire mobs which helped quite a bit. Though it is about time for an upgrade since I can use the rare PPU items now. We have to build or buy them first. We don’t have them yet. I do at least have holy items so that is helping us quite a bit for now.

We have the parts for two of the rare PPU spells, the rest of them we’ll probably be able to get over time or we’ll just trade for them. That is the one nice thing about Neocron, if you don’t have what you need chances are someone does and it’s just a matter of trading or bartering.

In the meantime I’m doing a lot of Construction missions on the Clan constructor. She’s sitting at 243 Construction which isn’t bad.

I’ve also been doing some Research missions with the Clan resser, she’s sitting at a modest 196 research. I need to work on it some, but she has a high success rate with rares so it’s not all bad.

I mostly want to do the missions so I can save up credits for a nice apartement in Via Rosso for my PPU. She just has a couple of crap-tacular apartments in Pepper Park at the moment.

Yes, multiplayer vehicles have been a thing for a while

Construction wise we have a few rares to build for the Clan. After that we may end up working on vehicles. The funniest part is that I have two characters with vehicle skill, I’ve built them, but I don’t have a single vehicle!

Next up I want to write about how to be a strait up pacifist in Neocron and actually still enjoy the game. Until then, happy hunting!

So here we see The Repopulation on the Hero Engine 2. The big deal about the Hero Engine 2 is a large update to the graphics engine.

The Repopulation looked good under Hero Engine 1 as far as I was concerned. The pre-alpha videos displayed graphics that were similar to those found in Fallen Earth, a game I played and enjoyed for some long time.

Other additions to the Hero Engine with Hero Engine 2 include a new middleware called Awesomium® which is a web UI browser framework.

From a player perspective it’s an interesting addition since it allows players to see web hosted content in game. Developers could post in game news, or post upcoming in game events to a web host such as the game website. Then the content would be visible to players both in and out of the game (without using the alt+tab option). I’m not 100% sure about how it’s implemented, but it still sounds like a fun addition. I know I wanted to use something like this when working with the OpenSim project for web driven story lines.

From a developer perspective though Hero Engine states that the integration assists with micro transactions and subscriptions. Hey, games have to make money or they don’t stay live.

Another middleware addition is SpeedTree® for Games 6. This middlware addition makes it quicker and easier for developers to add animated trees and foliage to a game. From a player standpoint, it’s not a huge deal, though it is nice seeing wavy grass in game. From a Developer standpoint though, something like SpeedTree® would cut down the back end work of adding custom animations to trees and foliage. Kind of a bonus in my book.

Despite some random MMO forum rumblings, it looks like the Hero Engine 2 is solid. It offers some very interesting features for building games, monetizing games, and giving games the ‘polished’ look that MMO gamers demand. It will be interesting to see what happens with games created on the Hero Engine platform.

Whether you love them or loath them, Developers are turning their eyes toward Sandbox game development.

Why? Because it’s much more cost effective than trying to cycle through content that players will plow through in a matter of hours.

Instead of looking to World of Warcraft and trying to emulate that design, it looks like more and more Developers/Producers are looking at EVE online and yes, even Mine Craft.

Mine Craft is no MMORPG, but in multi-player mode it is an MMO. Massively Multiplayer and Online. It sucks people in and doesn’t let them go.

Now why do people go back to playing Mine Craft instead of enjoying the shiny gems that are the current Themepark MMO’s?

Mine Craft gives you the ability to build your own structures. It even lets you build your own dungeons. I mean come on, how cool is that?

Even if you don’t have the patience to build you can explore, mine, then find other people and trade for anything else. There is even an economy in Mine Craft with respect to Emeralds. They’re only useful as currency (and very American, it’s green).

There are no levels in Mine Craft (there is experience, but that is only used for enchanting goods). You don’t find armor or weapons lying around. If you want to equip yourself, you’re going to have to build it yourself.

The thing is that even Developers/Producers are catching onto the fact that while players do love the super fancy roller coasters in Theme park games, you can only ride that so many times before you get sick of it, or from it.

In a Sandbox, you build yourself a castle. Yeah that by it’s self can be boring.

What if a creeper walks up, freaks out, and blows it away. Now you have to repair your castle.

Say some guy comes up and starts hacking away at it. You have to kill him, and repair your castle.

Now your gear is worn down, you have to make new tools and armor. TO THE MINES!!!

There’s just SO MUCH to do, and it doesn’t end unless you walk away.

Game companies have listened to the folks who play single player games for some time now. These people expect that every game they walk into will be like Diablo, Dragon Age, Skyrm.

You start out as the wandering hero to be, you gain strength and fight monsters for the best gear you can get your hands on. Then you get to the level cap and you go off to defeat the evil masters.

This is great and all, don’t get me wrong. I’ve played through Torchlight II and Diablo 3. It’s fun building the character and getting the loot. Thing is though, after the first couple play throughs random dungeons or not, it starts to get a little old.

When you are producing new single player games, say one project at a time. It’s cost effective. You produce the game, you sell the title. You offer DLC for the previous title while working on the next.

MMO’s don’t work that way. If you want a steady revenue stream, you need a game that will get people interested and KEEP people interested.

In a recent Wired.com article it looks like even SOE is getting into the act by building a new MMO with more sandbox elements. Thing is though, I’m going to keep an eye on the independent developers. I have a strong feeling that the success of the independent developer projects will set the tone for how many of the big names pick up the idea and run with it.

The Repopulation is my main focus. It looks a lot more like the kind of game I’ve been waiting for. And yes, still no more elves.

OK if you want you can check out the patch notes for 2.1 here. 2.1 is mostly bug and bonus fixing with a couple of coolness features here and there.

3 BIG items
Progress towns won’t lose buildings via server restart.
Geology and Nature kits are no longer required (that clears up some room in the pack).
And all crafting facilities are now universal.

Now the really big news is the PTS (Public Test Server). According to the news on the FE website the PTS is due to return this month. No time set yet.

It will however have the World Events and Faction Territory Control. Evidently Faction Territory Control will actually have a new zone all to it’s self.

The details for both the World Events and Faction Territory Control sound pretty wicked.

Successful World Events will reward PVE players after they fight off waves of whatever or some giant monster. It does look like it’ll be a different mechanic than Progress Towns so that should be interesting.

Faction Territory Control will actually let a faction take over a town and set up in a keep within that town. While at first they sound like your normal progress towns, they really aren’t. Each one of these areas are going to have 13 points to capture with 7 inside a keep the players can defend, with the other 6 standing out in the open making them harder to defend.

There’s a lot more to it, but until it’s live I’m not going to worry about the details. You can check out the screenies and more over at the Fallen Earth Dev Blog.

Figured I’d put up a little post on what I’m up to. I’m still spending most of my game time in Fallen Earth. That’s not going to change (even changed out for a year sub). Thing is I also picked up WoW again to run around with Moms. Yes I play World of Warcraft with my Mom. Running around Azeroth getting lost, getting her killed, and having a good time while doing it.

Her system can’t handle playing Fallen Earth (trust me I tried a few months ago out of desperation, no bueno). It can play WoW though.

They also have a pretty interesting promotion going right now where signing up for a year gives you an in game mount Diablo 3 themed, a copy of Diablo 3, AND BETA ACCESS! I’m such a sucker for beta access.

They’ve announced the Panderia expansion and so I figured, what the hell. I know I’m gonna buy it unless I’m totally broke so I might as well just be ready to dink around in it.

I mean hell, Moms and I were hiding out during the WoW zombie apocalypse before Wrath of the Lich King was released. We also watched as Azeroth was changed forever when Cataclysm hit.

Why would we miss out on rolling a couple of fat and sassy drunken masters (Pandarian Monks). No no… I don’t care what it’s really called, I will call mine drunken master. End of story. Because it’s effing hilarious.

Safe to say I’m signed up for a year of WoW.

The bastards finally found a way to get a full year sub out of me. *facepalms*

Haunted....

It’s not Fallen Earth though. I still love FE. Oh and I decided to sub up for a full year of Fallen Earth too. I couldn’t sub up for a year of WoW and not sub up for a year of Fallen Earth.

Yeah it’s pricy, but seriously, I don’t have a whole lot else going on right now. I might as well take advantage of the situation and game like a mad woman while I still can.

OH!!! I’ve finally hit 180 cooking crafting on Geistig. I’m not too worried about getting it up too much further at this point and I’ll probably go back and research it soon.

Geistig is by the way, is full crafter capable (which means her tradeskills can get up to 196, the current cap). Sadly though cooking is the highest tradeskill I have at the moment.

With the new system I need to spend a lot of time digging in trash (scavenging/harvesting/mining) to 1) have crap I can sell on the AH for some chips and 2) have enough crafting mats to continue leveling. Personally I love just wandering around FE digging in trash all on my lonesome.

I think now I need to focus on Weapons Crafting and research. There’s not really a weapons crafter in The Reavers and since there’s a lot of Melee folks in the clan it’d just be a good idea to have a researched Weapons Crafter.

After that I figure I can work on Armor crafting, maybe even construction, who knows.

I still have a lot of work to do on Geistig and looking forward to it.

I am stepping out of PvP though. True dedication to PvP just takes more time than I can allocate right now. Even though I’d love to be a hard core player, I gotta face it, I just don’t have the attention span for that lol.

I did leave KAOS. It’s not because I don’t love the clan, I still totally do and all the guys/gals in KAOS, end of story, no questions asked.

I was just starting to spend more time with The Reavers, and I really feel like they could use another crafter. That AND I miss getting into crazy RP situations on Geistig. The community just isn’t the same without her throwing monkey wrenches in EVERYONE’s plans.

It’s just how she rolls. You never know what to expect from Geistig.

That AND right now there’s a kid in The Reavers (Canni Belle) who’s stuck in Lifenet. She’s randomly popping around from one cloner to another (using the new Fast Travel system) haunting whoever manages to end up in the cloner at the time.

Safe to say this close to Halloween it’s pretty freakin’ epic.

Yes it’s nerdy and silly, but it’s also creative and fun. Well if you’re a person that likes a good story.

Sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo……

In World of Warcraft I’ll be on either Geistig the Unholy Death Knight (Uldam) or Geistig the Retribution Paladin (Rexxar). I know talk about a mix right?

In Fallen Earth, I’ll be on Geistig. There really is no description for this Geistig, so you’ll just have to roll with it.

On October 20th the FE team released a server side patch that, so far, has stabilized the server. For the last few days the game hasn’t totally crashed out. A lot of the low level areas are still pretty laggy with all of the new blood, but they’re not crashing. That’s a plus.

At this point I’m back on Geistig for a while trying to finish up her crafting, AP capping and so on. Good times right?

That and I want to get some higher end scavenging in to try to pick up some chips.

So if you’re hanging out in the wastelands and have any questions or just want someone to harass hit me up on Geistig. I’ll probably be digging in trash or raising hell somewhere.

The rampant influx of new players is still clogging up the Fallen Earth servers. Sadly it’s a case of success killing a game. Boneclaw and Embry keep dying. Not surprising. Boneclaw is the most popular noob zone and once folks are done in either the crafting or support noob towns they pretty much get sent to Embry.

Guess what that means?

The login servers are also having issues and have been taken down again as well. Having so many new players creating accounts is probably clogging up the servers faster than a box full of hamburgers can clog your arteries.

I want to say this pisses me off. It should because I can’t get into a game I’m paying for.

Fortunately this week I’m sick enough that I can’t do too much other than dig in trash or annoy the usual RP suspects. That means I’m not bugging not being able to log in.

I’m actually kind of stoked. If all the noobs logging into the game stay on, pay for something, Fallen Earth might FINALLY get the props it needs to be a successful game.

Let’s just hope the servers and databases are able to handle the load.

Good news is that FE is back up for the time being. So far the servers seem stable with standard lag.

The team has posted info on the nature of the server issues on this thread.

It looks like some database issues coupled with some server issues has given G1 some sleepless night getting Fallen Earth up, running and stable. Here’s hoping this last patch will do the trick.

It’s been touchy for a couple of days but hey, these things happen. So far folks that have been subbed have received 24 hours of reimbursement. So that’s bonus. They are trying and it looks like they’ve been working hard.